 Now even though I got into traditional Chinese medicine because I was working on healing chronic digestive problems I've had since childhood, around the age of 29 I had finally reached the convergence point of burnout where I'd been building my own company for three and a half years with a full-time job and then right when my body needed rest and I felt it I found my passion which is Chinese medicine and then jumped into four years of medical schooling and continued to stupidly run my company at the same pace as before. Now when that burnout hit me I was struck with about a dozen symptoms I've never had once in my life and so I was really freaking out and it really took me six months for the most severe ones to go away but even now almost two years later I'm not fully 100% myself and there are things that I feel people like looking at me don't necessarily know I'm going through this health crisis but I want to share in this video as the first video in a series on how I ended up healing myself and the recovery process and some of the lessons that I think will help you if you're struggling with a chronic illness or something that's new and you're confused and you're scared and you don't know where this is coming from. Hey I'm Alex Hine author of the book Master of the Day Current Doctoral Student in Traditional or Classical Chinese Medicine. Now I want to share with you quickly in the description box there below there's a link on a free guide five steps to add 10 years to your life. So first go click that download it and check it out you'll also get a beginner course on how Chinese medicine can help you heal yourself that's the first link in the description. So the very first self-healing lesson here is what I've heard one teacher describe as plugging energy leaks or what I call as bringing everything back to the middle. So Chinese medicine is very interesting because China even the characters for the country China do means the middle country or middle kingdom and Chinese medicine is called Zhongyi which means the middle medicine you could call it medicine of the middle which is the the Zhong from China. And what's so interesting is that Chinese medicine is all about balance in the sense that if something is too far in one direction you just kind of you fish it back in you bring it back to where it needs to be. The person's too up you reel them back in bring them down a bit they're too down you bring them up a bit they're too hot you cool them down a bit they're too cold you warm them up a bit at a fundamental level that's all we're really doing. And so when it comes to plugging energy leaks some of the things that I want you to think about that I've had to think about are work and rest diet emotions the state of the spirit and then the thing you already know you need to do. So when I say first of all work and rest obviously humans have evolved to rest one-third of the day and be awake and active two-thirds of the day but for each person the work and rest ratios are going to be different they're going to be different if you're in a chronic illness right now they're going to be different if you're young versus if you're old they're going to be different if you've taken care of your health or if you haven't. So when I say work and rest I for example I had a long history five years of working over 70 hours a week that's almost double a full-time workload so very obviously the first thing I needed to do to bring it back to the middle was to reduce my work hours as dramatically as I could. So the first thing I did was I chopped down rather than doing three hours of studying per day at school I dropped down to one and a half and rather than working in my business four hours a day I dropped down to two so I had reduced my work hours by almost 20 hours a week off the bat so that's what I mean your work is taken up this much how can you bring it back to the center a little bit more for you that may be one of the things one of the keys to self healing in the long run now when we talk about something like diet diet yin and yang can be as simple as how much you eat if you have a history of overeating eating fat heavy high-calorie rich foods maybe one of the aspects of your self healing is to give your digestive system a break and give the body more resources to heal is you eat lighter you eat smaller meals maybe you eat more plants or more plant based whatever it is you already know when I'm saying this you right now know exactly what you need to work on because I know right when I'm saying this the exact flaws that I have exactly where I need to work on and if you aren't sure what you need to work on just track every single day for 30 days or even one week track the hours you work you'll see where you are in the yin yang spectrum the hours you're having fun or your hours you're relaxing the hours of sleep the hours of playing and enjoying yourself bring that back to the center and when we talk about emotions one of the first signs that people are going out of balance and are leading down the road to chronic illness I can now reflect on myself the first two things I've noticed are changes in emotions and changes in sleep those are the first signs that the balance between yin and yang the person's life are now imbalanced and then eventually that will lead to disease or illness you know for me the thing that I know is when I was working 70 hours and building this company and it wasn't working and I'm like hammering away was a lot of anger a lot of agitation I got very snippy with people I got very frustrated when I go home to my parents I was very agitated you know even with one of my parents acting a little annoying I was disproportionately annoyed so disproportionately annoyed disproportionately frustrated and angry just like just leave me alone you know like I was very very obviously agitated that was the first thing that I should have recognized as my first warning sign that things were getting out of balance and then about six months or a year later I started having regular sleep issues I couldn't fall asleep I was feeling really hot and agitated as I would try to go to bed after I would get out of judo I'd be really thirsty really hot just could not sleep that was my second warning sign many of us are dominant in a certain expression of emotions maybe you're more angry like me more agitated maybe you start to feel more sad maybe you start to feel like maybe you're way too happy all the time you're like you know you got it like at this upper personality and it just needs to be reigned in a little bit like just like attach some light five-pound weights to your spirit bring it down a little bit right so it's wherever the spectrum is out of balance begin bringing it back into the center just rain it in a little bit if the energy is low like if you're depressive type person do whatever things make you feel a little bit better it could be watching comedy videos an hour a day and then one of the things is the state of the spirit and when I say this it's interesting because one of my mentors says after 30 years of practice he said that the number one thing he thinks patients can do to help self heal is to do something that they feel happy about on a daily basis because we get caught up in the crap of the grind of like parenting and job and all day we go through the day without smiling speaking for myself without doing like one thing that makes us feel happy and joyful and excites us so for so many people now with like this anxiety and depression epidemic doing something that makes you feel good internally that make that excites you 30 minutes a day if that's all you have it could be the gym it could be going to a movie could be reading a book in a coffee shop playing with puppies going on a date what is that thing that helps like make you feel alive again that's another way of bringing the emotion or the these if you want to call the spiritual state state of the spirit back into a more natural place now the last thing I want to leave you with here is what is the thing you know you most obviously have to work on and I say that because for me I I never miss a gym workout like over 10 years I still cook every day doesn't mean I never eat out but I still cook the bulk of my meals so to me I was so shell-shocked about how it was possible I could have gotten this ill when I was doing I was like mr. healthy never get sick the whole town will get a flu I'll be one of the only people who doesn't get a flu almost never get colds and here I am struck and down like you know Achilles with the arrow in his heel and the reason was because I missed my most obvious thing which was that my biggest flaw is really overwork and or stress so that was my the chink in my armor that I should have been more aware of now I know I'm most likely not gonna die young from improper diet or lack of exercise but if I kill myself young it's gonna be from stress and overwork so now I know that that is the obvious thing in my life it'll probably be a continual thread to the day I die that I need to watch out for for you it may be that you drink five cups of coffee a day maybe you take drugs or prescription drugs maybe you're too lax and you're too you know you have too much of an upper personality and you just have to like people just want to put weights on your shoulders like just chill Billy just like just they want to tie you down to the floor right you can ask your friends if you want the most honest feedback or your family they will give you that honest feedback if you want it the most obvious thing which sometimes is the thing you enjoy the most as your vice is often where you need to focus so that may be sugar it may be something else so think carefully and I know what I'm saying this you know exactly what it is so that is my number one lesson for beginning the process of self healing it doesn't mean that everything's gonna go away overnight and it doesn't mean that this by itself will fix everything without medication or without herbal formulas without medical treatment but it is something for so many people with modern diseases of affluence of lifestyle that can help heal so many people millions and million millions I'm absolutely certain of so if you are at the stages of I'm not doing well bring everything back to the middle because that is lesson number one now again you can download that free checklist on how to add 10 years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine the first link in the description box there below you can also check out my last two videos right there